Thoughtleadership for Successful
CRM and Sales Process

Posts Tagged as‘learning new technology’

I have recently had the displeasure of teaching my mom, now in her early 60's, how to use the shiny new laptop we got her for Christmas. It was a great idea in theory: let’s get her something so she can email family and friends who live out of state, allow us to send her digital pictures of family and friends the minute they’re taken, and allow her to access the wealth of information on the Internet to feed her curiosity. I added shortcuts to all sorts of things on her desktop to give her more things to play with. I showed her how to access Solitare.

What we quickly found out is that what I perceive as simple (due to my 2+ decades of exposure to computers) was overwhelming, intimidating and confusing to her. Things I showed her on Monday, she forgot on Tuesday. She would call me asking what this pop-up screen was and where it came from (I of course had no idea). She was confused how her web mail had 2 different ways to get to her Inbox, and each looked a little bit different. Things I thought she would find "cool" and put on her desktop were just additional things she didn’t know how to work. The lesson: Just because her computer COULD do 1,001 things, and I found them easy to use, doesn’t mean that she wanted or needed them. Or at least not yet.

Eventually, after a few months of figuring out how to check and send email, what "reply" vs. "reply all" meant, and her finally getting the hint that I didn't want her forwarding me chain letters any more, she "got it." She was ready to move on to updating her desktop with a picture, or buying airline tickets online. She got comfortable with the basics, and tried new things bit by bit.

My job is to help customers get up and running on CampaignerCRM. I find more and more that customers want to buy their sales team a new and shiny system with all sorts of bells and whistles, turn them all on, roll it out to the team and expect them to be WOWED all of these cool things. "Hey, look at this chart showing you the position of the moon right now, isn’t that cool?!"

Unfortunately, what happens all too often is that the sales team gets overwhelmed with learning dozens of new steps and functions. They are expected to run before they walk, or even sprint before they walk. End result: they fold their arms and refuse to use it on the grounds that it’s too complicated.

CampaignerCRM, much like other programs and systems these days, has a lot of capabilities. Fortunately, only a handful of them are really "required" at the core to use it from the start. The additional features, which are "optional", do indeed add value, sometimes tremendous value, to any sales organization. However, always be cognizant of the team that will be using it, their previous experience with similar systems (good and bad), and be sensitive to the learning curve of a new system. Consider enabling additional features, modules or data requirements after a few weeks or months of regular usage.

Allow them to walk before they run. Your adoption will be better for it.